Sebelius tells Senate during ObamaCare hearing: Delay is not an option

posted at 3:21 pm on November 6, 2013 by Allahpundit

Republicans and some Democrats are calling on the Obama administration to extend the open-enrollment period or delay the individual mandate in light of the rocky rollout of the Affordable Care Act. But Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says that’s not an option.

“People’s lives depend on this,” she told the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday

“Delaying the Affordable Care Act wouldn’t delay people’s cancer, or diabetes or Parkinson’s…mental health services or cholesterol screenings or prenatal care. Delaying the Affordable Care Act doesn’t delay the foreclosure notices for families forced into bankruptcy by unpayable medical bills. It doesn’t delay the higher costs all of us pay when uninsured Americans are left with no choice but to rely on emergency rooms for care,” she added.

Gold star for Sebelius: It takes elephant-sized balls to remind the law’s critics that people’s lives are riding on this when HHS and CMS didn’t care enough about that to make sure the website was competently designed in the first place, which would have spared them this entire discussion about delay. They were too worried about what Republicans might say, or what others might say to them, to bring in contractors who would have built a functioning website from the get go. They’ve created a colossal mess where not only is the insurance industry facing adverse selection problems right out of the chute, but the millions who’ve been dropped from their plans are at risk of not having coverage on January 1 because the farking website won’t let them enroll. So this is the new White House spin, I guess: If you support well-meaning (but admittedly counterproductive) measures like delay to help Obama and Sebelius clean up their droppings, you kinda sorta want sick people to suffer. That’s how they’re going to buy a little more time. Emphasis on “a little.”

Speaking of which, remember how exactly six people from coast to coast managed to enroll on Healthcare.gov’s first day online? According to internal memos uncovered by Darrell Issa’s committee, they managed to get the number up during the rest of the first week to … “700+ enrollments.” That puts them on pace for 100 per day, which would mean 3,100 for the month; their target for October, you may recall, was just shy of, er, 500,000 enrollments. But what about paper applications? Not so good there either:

Serco, the contractor responsible for processing all applications by mail, “can’t process online the 500+ applications they have” because they can’t log in, an Oct. 8 memo noted. “They may be doing the opening and mailroom part, but they haven’t been able to link to the application and get people an eligibility determination.”…

The collection of paper created new problems, however. There were mounting “discrepancies between the paper applications and online system they need to populate,” one memo reads. In other words, many applications were incomplete without proper in-person follow up…

As of Oct. 27, roughly 4,000 applications had been entered into the system, with 1,400 in the process of being keyed in by a contractor, according to the memos. About 6,000 applications remain in the queue because of missing data or other issues. To handle the surge in applications, the Serco is boosting its staff of 1,800 to 3,800 by December, according to an Oct. 16 memo.

So, with just four days left to go in October, the big fallback option they were touting as a partial solution to the website problems had resulted in just 10,000 or so applications overall, around two percent of their target for the month. Except these aren’t even enrollments, they’re just applications. In order to proceed from applying to actually enrolling, they need to use the same crappy website that won’t work for anyone. Those 10,000 are more accurately described as prospective enrollees, then, which helps explain why Sebelius told the Senate committee this morning that the enrollment figures released next week will be “quite low.” If she cared about sick people, she would have anticipated all of this long ago, right?

Via NRO, here’s Sebelius describing her very exacting standards in recruiting “navigators” to help people apply for O-Care plans.

Gold star for Sebelius: It takes elephant-sized balls to remind the law’s critics that people’s lives are riding on this when HHS and CMS didn’t care enough about that to make sure the website was competently designed in the first place, which would have spared them this entire discussion about delay.

Do not confuse courage with shamelessness… Obama and his communists are shameless…

While they were debating all the political points, in the White House, was there one adult there, just one, who said, “We can’t do this like this, people’s lives depend on us getting this right and the politics be damned.” If not, why not? Why now are they just beginning to get concerned about getting this right? They should have been concerned about this the night they Rahmed this legislation through, without a Republican vote, and decided that the people of Massachusetts didn’t know what they were doing when they elected Scott Brown.

I expect the Republicans to start hammering the President and his White House on this stuff because, if appears, they’re the most responsible for lying to the American people and stopping the necessary testing and many facets of the web design that have this thing really messed up. Sebelius is just the sacrificial lamb for Obama on this, whether she was inept is not the problem, the problem is the executive didn’t put anyone in charge who wasn’t inept.

How many have they killed since the legislation was authored in Jan. 2010? What, 3 years worth. They had no problem immediately implementing up to 26 yr olds to stay on pappy’s policy, cause hey, those are the LEAST sick. #illogical

“Delaying the Affordable Care Act wouldn’t delay people’s cancer, or diabetes or Parkinson’s…mental health services or cholesterol screenings or prenatal care. Delaying the Affordable Care Act doesn’t delay the foreclosure notices for families forced into bankruptcy by unpayable medical bills. It doesn’t delay the higher costs all of us pay when uninsured Americans are left with no choice but to rely on emergency rooms for care,” she added.

What a POS. First, she and her co-criminals enthusiastically takes away insurance critical to lives all over the country and then says Republicans can’t fix the Democrat-created mess because “lives depend” on continuing to screw up the system.

Obama will never accept delay of the disaster because it means that he is finished… In fact he is finished but he simply does not know it… Obamacare is dead but it is only a matter of officially burying it… It may takes few years…

More identities will be stolen thanks to this crappy system than people will buy insurance. At what point do the Democrats start to really panic? I ask because my insurance was cancelled and I’m trying to estimate the likelihood of getting a new policy for next year, and I think that bet is intimately related to how willing Democrats are to let the market work.

Delay isn’t really an option. Delay plus something else, maybe. But what else? I have no idea. And the Republicans had better figure it out. Because with delay, those 5% of people who are going to have rate spikes now are going to end up with nothing. That won’t be a winner for the GOP.

Obama will never accept delay of the disaster because it means that he is finished… In fact he is finished but he simply does not know it… Obamacare is dead but it is only a matter of officially burying it… It may takes few yearsmonths…

mnjg on November 6, 2013 at 3:32 PM

It’s going to be repealed – I am so sure about this prediction, I’ve got money riding on it! :)

It’s going to be repealed – I am so sure about this prediction, I’ve got money riding on it! :)

Anti-Control on November 6, 2013 at 3:40 PM

All of these people with preexisting conditions that were on an insurance plan when they developed their condition were able to stay on their old plan because that’s what insurance is for – being there when something bad happens. Now, Obamacare has kicked them off of their old plan. If we try to go back to the old ways, what then? These people have lost their old insurance. You bring back pre-existing condition exclusions, they will be SOL.

She’s actually right to a certain extent. Obamacare has so thoroughly destroyed the previous system, that something new needs to be done post-Obamacare. We can’t just repeal it and be done with it. That would be a humanitarian and political disaster.

The big issue is not how many gross “enrollments” there were. What percentage of them were for Medicaid? Each Medicaid enrollment hastens the collapse of the entire system. So, whatever fake number the crow about tomorrow, remember to ask what they enrolled for.

Anyone want to speculate that Obama will simply refuse to delay the Mandate and just allow people to get penalized in spite of not being able to purchase the product?

Doomberg on November 6, 2013 at 3:43 PM

I’m hoping he does.

The largest class action lawsuit ever seen will ensue: The People of the United States vs Obama. The ACA is suspended via injunction. And the damages will be all the money put into the ACA parceled out as a check to each and every individual citizen. The government might claim sovereign immunity, but I’m guessing Congress will have none of that. And as the ACA is so broad in its promises to EVERYONE I can’t see a court allowing sovereign immunity as the class is too large, being everyone in the country and all.

If a person was told they could keep their current electricity rates if they switched to a new power company and then there rates zoomed up 200%, they could sue the power company.
Why aren’t/can’t people sue the government for the same type lie with ObamaCare?

All of these people with preexisting conditions that were on an insurance plan when they developed their condition were able to stay on their old plan because that’s what insurance is for – being there when something bad happens. Now, Obamacare has kicked them off of their old plan. If we try to go back to the old ways, what then? These people have lost their old insurance. You bring back pre-existing condition exclusions, they will be SOL.

besser tot als rot on November 6, 2013 at 3:43 PM

You believe going forward with ChoomCare will be even less painful overall?

It isn’t sustainable nor workable, and if the courts don’t dismantle it first, 0dumba will have to bite the bullet because the turmoil this country will go through would be too great for him to avoid.

Who is going to repeal it? Obama is going to double down – he always does – and the Republicans don’t even the will to try let alone the votes, no matter how bad this thing gets.

Doomberg on November 6, 2013 at 3:49 PM

Please, use your imagination about how bad things could get. This will be a catastrophic tsunami when it hits, and not even Choom with his gigantic ego will dither when at least half the country wants him tarred & feathered, or worse…

Obama won’t look to congress to delay he will just do what he has been doing all along and issue an edict from on high that it will be postponed. Why not no one especially the cowardly GOP won’t stop him.

Delay?
They should bring the individual mandate forward. I cannot wait to sit around with my popcorn and watch the dems up for senate reelection in 2014 squirm when this train wreck fully engages with the crap fan in January.

Do we need to hear more from this loser? She told us last time that she was “responsible” for the billion dollar screw up that is healthcare.gov. So what does being “responsible” mean? Does she pay us back the money? Does she undo any of the harm she caused? Does she at least resign so that someone else gets to try to clean up her mess?

None of the above. Being “responsible” as we learned from Shrillery on Benghazi and all the other examples is simply the new “mistakes were made.” That’s all. Now move along.

As of Oct. 27, roughly 4,000 applications had been entered into the system, with 1,400 in the process of being keyed in by a contractor, according to the memos. About 6,000 applications remain in the queue because of missing data or other issues. To handle the surge in applications, the Serco is boosting its staff of 1,800 to 3,800 by December, according to an Oct. 16 memo.

They need 3,800 people to process 10,000 applications? That’s less than 3 applications per person! Everybody knows government is slow, but this is ridiculous!

Not only is Sebelius a dead-ringer for Ricardo Montalban as Khan from “Star Trek II,” but she’s also got the same entire genetically-engineered superior human thing going for her that made Khan such an engaging villain.

And can we all agree that Obamacare is the real-world equivalent of the Genesis device, set for proximity detonation — an explosion from which our ship of state cannot escape?

The incredible thing is that it took 1800 people to process 10,000 applications, none of which are actually in the system yet. And that’s not just 3-5 applications per person, it’s 3-5 applications per person per effing October. Jesus Christ.

“Delaying the Affordable Care Act wouldn’t delay people’s cancer, or diabetes or Parkinson’s…mental health services or cholesterol screenings or prenatal care. Delaying the Affordable Care Act doesn’t delay the foreclosure notices for families forced into bankruptcy by unpayable medical bills. It doesn’t delay the higher costs all of us pay when uninsured Americans are left with no choice but to rely on emergency rooms for care,” she added.

What about the millions of Americans who will lose their insurance BECAUSE of the unaffordable Care Act that will be forced into bankruptcy by unpayable premiums?

Obama and Sebelius will soon turn the entire American health care system into one big emergency room–the only health care anyone can afford.

It’s a challenge to determine just which of the following is more infuriating…

– the arrogance, antipathy, incompetence, and patronizing attitude of Sebelius / Tavenner as they faces questions from Congressional oversight on the EpicClusterFark while they claims accountability and responsibility but haven’t accepted accountability and responsibility by firing themselves?

– the vapid Democrat Congresscritters who bob and weave trying to blame the EpicClusterFark on the insurance cos, the lack of GOP support, even the insured’s for buying ‘substandard policies’ because they are too dumb to know better – but can’t, for ideological reasons, pin the blame on the Donkey in charge?

– or the disorganized GOP Congresscritters, where only a few of them really have an understanding of many challenges in the EpicClusterFark, and too many are focusing on the low hanging fruit (which plays into the Administration’s hands)?

Gold star for Sebelius: It takes elephant-sized balls to remind the law’s critics that people’s lives are riding on this when HHS and CMS didn’t care enough about that to make sure the website was competently designed in the first place, which would have spared them this entire discussion about delay. They were too worried about what Republicans might say, or what others might say to them, to bring in contractors who would have built a functioning website from the get go. They’ve created a colossal mess where not only is the insurance industry facing adverse selection problems right out of the chute, but the millions who’ve been dropped from their plans are at risk of not having coverage on January 1 because the farking website won’t let them enroll.

Why couldn’t even one Senator of that committee ask a variation of the above quote to the HHS Sec after she did her disingenuous plea against delaying the individual mandate?

Without the individual mandate, the ACA will collapse. Delaying the individual mandate will result in the ACA collapsing. From Obama to Sebelius to Progressive Democrats, they still believe the ACA will succeed in what it is supposed to do, and that is why they are loath to touch the individual mandate at all.

What they don’t accept is that the ACA will collapse because the laws of economics and human nature are immutable.

Yep. In the end they will need to change something, such as increase the penalty tenfold. The reason is simple math as you stated. There aren’t a whole lot of people who are going to volunteer to get ripped off in the interest of paying someone else’s way.

No problem at all. I, SunSword, have a simple solution to it all. Simply declare that no health insurance is required. All citizens can go to any doctor and request health care. First come first served. The doctors can charge whatever they want. And all bills will be sent straight to the White House. The White House can hire a bunch of clerks to create spreadsheets with (a) biller name and address and (b) amount. End of the month, they tally it up. The Treasury will cut checks to the providers, issue securities to cover the amount (let’s call them “American Health Bonds” or AHBs). The Fed will then buy the bonds.

Yep. In the end they will need to change something, such as increase the penalty tenfold. The reason is simple math as you stated. There aren’t a whole lot of people who are going to volunteer to get ripped off in the interest of paying someone else’s way.
MJBrutus on November 6, 2013 at 4:52 PM

Roberts allowed it because the penalty was low. Raise it significantly and Obamacare goes back to court.

People are getting cancellation letters that take effect as early as January 1.

With no insurance an nowhere to enroll, these folks are stuck.

The insurance companies could reenroll them for a year, but why? The expense of reactivating them, reconstructing their provider networks and service facilities will be expensive. Send the bill to HHS?

If one of these folks has a heart attack on January 20th and they can not enroll, who will pay when the bills arrive in the mail?

They are believers in a fantasy ideology… in fact their entire ideology is just an eschatology, a view of the universe no longer tethered to any sort of actual, physical world. Fascism was an ideology and an off-shoot of Marxism – both are ideologies with scholarship and works behind them to attach to something (albeit Marx, himself wasn’t all that hot on the concepts of value, labor or the problems of simple things like poor workmanship) to which a world view can be hung. I doubt that very many modern Leftists have actually cracked open Das Kapital or even tried to place Marx into a line of post-classical thought which continued on long after Marx and not just followers of Marx but also those who looked at Utilitarianism. They haven’t bothered to ever crack open a work by Locke or even Smith, not to speak of Marx, and yet hear about the happy-slappy end-time of Marx and decide ‘this is RIGHT’.

Ask the believers of this modern Left what the basis for this feeling is, what the lineage of thought is leading up to it, and what actual scholarship has been done to examine if it actually works and you get plenty of dumb looks. Ask them if they can give three points for Marx’s Labor Theory of Value and three points against it and it is deer in the headlights time. Yet, because the outcome of all that Marxist drivel is what they believe in, they had better know what the basis for it is… but never check. The lack of intellectual curiosity on the part of the modern Left is stunning. Ask them about the tenets of the basis for a technocratic State and you get blabber. Ask them about how the actual technocratic State has worked when implemented, and there are examples… bloody, nasty examples… and you get swooning over the idea, no clue about the facts of the outcome of such warm feelings.

If the voters are low information, the politicians are reflective of them and that ought to be frightening to EVERYONE. A Fantasy Ideology based on fuzzy warm feelings about a technocratic State and no examination of its ideological basis, no review of historical examples, and not one tiny bit of critical thought all place the modern Left into a realm of eschatology: a view of the universe, not an ideology based in anything.

Who else works like that?

Jihadists who believed that Allah would sweep America away after the fall of the Twin Towers. And not in years or decades, mind you, but that very day. If you just do all the right things, say all the right things, and put your trust in your eschatology then miracles will happen! Trust in the ‘experts’ of the technocratic State to figure out how to provide ‘health insurance’ to everyone and, LO!, it will magically happen!

Nope, doesn’t work like that.

When the universe does not conform to their eschatology it is the UNIVERSE THAT IS WRONG!

Look at Sibelius… no, wait, I’m not that cruel… read her words and see that behind them is not an ideology but an eschatology based in some unprovable scheme that is being thwarted by evil forces, and that all those people threatened by all the changes are not the fault of the changes but those evil ones. Mind you the evil ones change day by day, hour by hour, second by second because it is not a very well defined eschatology. Marxists you could at least deal with on an intellectual basis and get them all tangled up in just how many classes there actually are. The believers in this eschatology aren’t bound by REASON, just happy-slappy good warm fuzzy feelings that are TRUE.

This isn’t even a religion. We should be so lucky, but that requires scholarship, analysis, compiling of texts, checking them out… nope, too much work! Thus when the universe doesn’t conform to what they think it should do you get anger, hatred and wanting to get rid of the unbelievers. That doesn’t end well, especially with undocumented religions, as that set of unbelievers expands over time and soon will encompass everyone as the external hatred turns inwards. We already see it with the anti-human agenda of the ‘environmentalists’ who are a bit further advanced in the eschatological process.

So I am left going back to basics.

Shelter.

Food.

Water.

Guns.

Ammo.

Until much pain is applied to the happy-slappy feel good because ‘its all good’ people, things will not get better. Being there and level headed to tell them that hating and killing others will not end well for them or for anyone is necessary. The job of the civilized is to remain civilized and prepare to deal with the barbarism that comes from such nebulous beliefs once they crash to Earth. Crash they will. Better now and hard, with much pain, than to try and ‘ease them out of it’ because they will seek to exploit your goodness to their nihilistic totalitarian eschatology and convert you. Well, if the dreams must go up, let them go up in big, bright flames and bring that pain. I feel no hatred towards these people, only pity and knowing that by doing the hard and right thing that there is much hard work ahead of me and each civilized man and woman who wishes for civilization to survive. You don’t get civilized because of government. But you can sure become barbarians real fast with too much of it, that’s for sure.

No problem at all. I, SunSword, have a simple solution to it all. Simply declare that no health insurance is required. All citizens can go to any doctor and request health care. First come first served. The doctors can charge whatever they want. And all bills will be sent straight to the White House. The White House can hire a bunch of clerks to create spreadsheets with (a) biller name and address and (b) amount. End of the month, they tally it up. The Treasury will cut checks to the providers, issue securities to cover the amount (let’s call them “American Health Bonds” or AHBs). The Fed will then buy the bonds.

This little theatre act by Sebelius was the one part of her apperance before Congress in which SHE READ HER STATEMENTS FROM A PRE-PREPARED TEXT.

These pitiful efforts by her to “sound sympathetic to suffering” were pre-written, pre-arranged, typed and ready for her reading before Congress. She couldn’t or wouldn’t even make a genuinely humane statement when asked about this issue of delaying Obamacare implementation in order to make it functional, so-called. Instead, predictably evil, she EXPLOITED A PREPARED TEXT ABOUT ‘THE POOR’ to justify her own and Obama’s political egos.

I was utterly disgusted by her at that. As if not earlier, but this was her lowest of low points in revealing her decrepit character. I bet she or one of Obama’s media helpers (evil tongue Dunn, likely) devoted a great deal of concentration to “sounding caring” in writing this text for her.

I need no further proof that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is psychotic. She is completely out of touch with reality.

sadatoni on November 6, 2013 at 5:11 PM

It’s difficult at the least to accept that she, who cannot or will not answer direct, simple questions, would ever be placed in charge of such an influential and expensive federal division as Health And Human Services.

Has anyone learned anything from anything she’s said in the hours upon hours she’s avoided answering every question? She’s done only one thing well and that is drawn out the clock on every questioning Congressperson’s time while avoiding their questions altogether with a flood of nonsense speak.

AND Sebelius boasted today that she “is accountable”.

How? By what repurcussion? By what action? Anyone? She’s not facing any repurcussions much moreso punishment for her “accountability”. She AND Obama should be tried for fraud and put into a penitentiary.

Sebelius biggest irrational hole is that IF she was REALLY, genuinely concerned about, and motivated by, these “humans” “suffering,” she’d have ensured she (1.) didn’t misrepresent to anyone what she was up to or why and (2.) would have ensured a viable product at launch time.

Since she didn’t do either, much moreso all the rest of her debauchery in office, I’d say this prepared and read text of hers feigning caring is another one of her prepared lies to sound cute and all.